


De Profundis

by tyroneslothrop



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 1st Person Narrative, Angst, Kinda, M/M, Yep I don't know how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:22:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/tyroneslothrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 'video', reimagined for the modern reader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Profundis

Happy Valentines day. It's 2015 now. We've passed adolescence, and hopefully Youtube leaks. Happy Valentines day. I'm bad at this now. I've molded the way I speak to comply with our fans. I no longer have any concept of intimate speech. I love you. I'd write it on the skyline if I could, but I can't. So I'll settle for the ceiling paneling of the closet, 'I love you' etched in crude graffiti. You'll appreciate it. You always said you loved my handwriting.

I thought, everything I have learned, all the emotions I have cultivated will all rinse out of me and into the drain as soon as my spirit leaves my body. There are 2 ways to combat this, with pen and with video. I cannot write, so therefore I picked up the camera. This is me speaking to you. Raw, unedited.

There's a lot of things. The first message I received from you. The first breath I heard from you. Personifying everything I thought about you, clever and saccharine. All your incipient cutting grandeur. Poetic in its execution, with each elegant expression of your body language. I loved you immediately. I tried to say it without speaking. My body wasn't enough.

There's a lot of memories I hold dear to myself. Maybe the Starbucks sofa. Maybe it'd be relevant to mention. Corporate capitalism, I suppose. Legs spread on your sofa with sweeping abundance. You always got the caramel macchiato. That shit stinks, by the way. I'd still kiss you afterwards though, your lips outweigh the negatives. Pink and sweet, the only thing the camera is focused on through the haze. 

Our first kiss on that big wheel. I can still feel the plumpness of your lips pressed to me awkwardly sometimes. It wakes me up at night. It gives me bad dreams, Daniel.

Maybe breakfast too. Our three hours breakfasts where the reek of dried sweat is palpable in the room. There's still the faint tang of come at the back of my throat. The cereal tastes like absolute shit because we left it for too long but I'm shoveling it down my throat anyway. You're laughing at something on TV, and I'm not sure what but I'm laughing too because you are infectious. Like a disease, almost. I don't want cured. Burn the hospitals.

And your parents. String puppets dancing through your household. Slapstick comedy. Hitting each other without the canned laughter. Your father, in all his homophobic splendor and your mother, so frightful and easily spooked, but as guilty as he is. Make you feel filthy for having opinions. How you wanted to escape! Run off into the sunset. Let me be your sunset, I said, crying into the electric void of our webcam cameras. My message came through pixelated.

I became your sunset. But every sunset fades, and I carry off into my own bedroom, you to yours. Let it be known that we do not sleep together. Look how that ended with your parents!

The first time I said I loved you. You awoken bathed in the glow of morning. Pink, naked and perfect. It rolled off my tongue. I felt like I'd been saying it my whole life. You got weepy, tears staining the canvas of your face. I kissed them off, one by one.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, God is real. I see him in Daniel's eyes when he's sorting through the post, the daily routine of redundancy. I see him in Daniel's eyes when he's flicking through the television channels. Mind numbing, vapid bullshit, queued one after the other. He's in Daniel's eyes when he's making videos. Dead. The absence of life. God is real and he lives within Dan Howell. Maybe that's why I love him, hate him at the same time. A gentle winged seraph he is, as gorgeous and as valiant as one too.

I seen the grotesque leer of Satan's face one day. We were fighting. About what, I do not recall. I said things. Hurtful things. There were tears prickling your skin and venom dribbling out of your mouth. You found flight, taking off, the slam of the door your only farewell. One with the birds. I seen Satan. He was on the back of the door, jesting.

I had been working a funeral. Drinking on an empty stomach and an empty head. Ready to explode. You twirled through the crowds like a silent explosion, beautiful and creamy and grandiloquent. And I swore to the ceiling that I'd never be like your parents. I embraced you right there and then, damn the cameras. Performing for people when they're drunk! What an exhaustion. You feel your relatives critique you when you recite your lines. I'm unmindful though, not when I have the most beautiful boy in the world in my arms. To be drunk and to be dead is separated by a slice of paper. Maybe the section of the newspaper with our obituaries, darling.

There is a yellow balloon hung in the sky and it follows you around like a lost dog. There's vanilla cotton candy strung up there too that joins them. A vibrant conga line. You command everything around you Daniel, did you know that? You are the conductor and the composer. We are the instrument players. Easily replacable. You scan over us in earnest, never making eye contact. Your eyes are like two droplets of amber gauged into your sockets. About as emotionless as a gemstone too. 

I am adhering to the philosophy of your body now. All those cherry soaked nights. The nights I would cry your name to the ceiling. A symphony of anatomy colliding. Maybe it reached God's ears. Maybe our passed relatives were watching, blessing us. Useless ghosts pinned to the walls. Portraits hung around our coffin. I ejaculate. I ask you if you want to shower, cleanse ourselves. And the answer is always no, shaking yourself from the blankets that drown you.

My dreams are meta now. Dreams within dreams. I'm aware of them. My worst thoughts. Your father. A ghost above me. I awaken those nights and embrace you, with silent tears down my cheeks. You are aware of them. The ghosts around us are aware too. The world is watching, everything a crescendo of customers. We sell our bodies to the night.

And all the evenings where we'd gaze up at the moon dampened by the streetlights and I'd place my hand in yours. You'd swing it a bit and I'd think "Maybe this year could be the year". Then I'd look at you and I'd know without asking the answer is no.


End file.
